Election

HEY AMERICA: Today is National Voter Registration Day

Posted by on September 25, 2012 at 9:27 am. NO Comments :

From NationalVoterRegistrationDay.com:

In 2008, 6 million Americans didn’t vote because they missed a registration deadline or didn’t know how to register. In 2012, we want to make sure no one is left out.

On September 25, 2012, volunteers, celebrities, and organizations from all over the country will “hit the streets” for National Voter Registration Day. This single day of coordinated ?eld, technology and media efforts will create pervasive awareness of voter registration opportunities–allowing us to reach tens of thousands of voters or more who we could not reach otherwise.

Over 1,000 organizations, including Facebook, Google, and Rolling Stone, are coming together to set up what will be an unprecedented online and offline effort to make sure voters are registered. News Corpse is participating in this nationwide exercise in patriotism by providing an opportunity for readers to register and get information specific to each state’s laws and procedures.

The GOP is working overtime to suppress the vote. They are passing laws that disenfranchise seniors, minorities, students, and other legitimate voters who just happen to lean Democratic. But if we counter those efforts in the courts and the public arena, we can defeat them and ensure that all eligible citizens get to express themselves in this election.

Use this form register or get more information. And pass it along to your friends and family.

What’s next? Visit GottaVote.com

  • Plan to vote: Find out what you need to vote, what rules your state has about voting, the details about absentee voting, and other important dates and deadlines.
  • Early vote: Check if your state allows early voting – and when early voting begins. [This is important as it frees up resources to get out the vote on election day]
  • Commit to vote: Commit to vote in this election – and send yourself a reminder to vote once the polls are open.
  • Find your polling place: Find out where you vote on election day and what hours your polling place is open.
  • Mark your calendar: Add important dates and deadlines to your phone or personal calendar.
  • Tell your friends: Share important information about registering to vote and how to vote with your friends.

Spread the word and don’t let your voice be silenced.

Fox News Desperation Grows: As Romney’s Prospects Decay, Anti-Obama Attacks Accelerate

Posted by on September 25, 2012 at 4:00 am. 21 Comments :

It must be frustrating to be a Fox News producer or editor these days knowing that your professional mission is to advance the campaign of Mitt Romney for president, while Romney himself seems to be working as hard as he can to sabotage any possibility of victory.

Last week was widely considered to be disastrous for the Romney campaign, but what is most notable about the Romney Ticket’s Series of Unfortunate Events is that they were all the fault of Romney’s own missteps. Which makes it all the more curious that he appears to be so completely clueless as to his shortcomings. He told an interviewer that there is not a thing wrong with his excellent campaign and that it doesn’t require any turnaround:

Mitt Romney Campaign Turnaround

Someone must not have conveyed that positive message to the rest of Romney’s staff. As Rachel Maddow noted last night, Romney’s campaign has undergone a steady stream of makeovers, resets, retoolings, reboots, and recasting of messages:

Rachel Maddow Resets

So what does poor Fox News do when faced with such a rolling calamity (as conservative columnist Peggy Noonan described Romney’s campaign)? Well, they litter their reporting with nothing but anti-Obama stories in a desperate attempt to unlevel the playing field and boost Romney’s fading prospects. Yesterday on the Fox News web site the following stories appeared:

  • ’60 Minutes’ interview causes headache for White House
  • Libya latest example of Obama administration downplaying initial reports of terror?
  • Obama heads for taping of ‘The View,’ as UN summit begins
  • Romney accuses Obama of trying to ‘fool’ voters
  • Ryan: President Obama will let Medicare go belly up.
  • Ryan: If Obama ‘can’t change Washington’ we need to change presidents
  • Obama admits some ads go ‘overboard,’ Romney defends campaign in dueling interviews
  • Obama Shifts Further on Libya Strike, Says Attack Not ‘Just a Mob Action’
  • White House: Obama Too Busy for Side Meetings at UN
  • White House pressed on why Obama UN itinerary doesn’t include meetings with world leaders

That’s ten stories with obviously anti-Obama spin. And to make this unfair and unbalanced presentation of the “news” all the more apparent, there was not even one story that similarly treated Romney. Not one. Zero. Zilch. In fact there wasn’t even a single story wherein Romney was the lede. That must be because even Fox couldn’t find anything positive to say about his campaign. Therefore, they stuck to burying Obama in an avalanche of mud.

Meanwhile, on the air at Fox News, they approached their political reporting with a peculiar slant. Just about every story was framed along the lines of “What Can Romney Do To Turn Things Around?” Or “How Will Romney Respond To All The Negative Media?” Or this bit of breaking news: “Gov. Romney Revs Up 2012 Campaign.”

Bret Baier Fox News

These are characteristic representations of Fox News’ partisan perspective. They would, of course, never lead off with a headline like “What Can Obama Do To Maintain His Lead?” The Pro-Romney editorializing at Fox News could not be more transparent. They have gone into overdrive as they recognize the near futility of pulling Romney’s ass out of the fire of his own making. It is almost painful to watch them squirming like worms on a hot sidewalk who know that it’s just a matter of time before they become so desiccated they can no longer wriggle in the sun.

The desperation of Fox News is manifest in their manic hyperactivity to pile on Obama, while virtually ignoring the hapless misadventures of Mitt & Co. And this is the sort of misbehavior that we can expect to increase in the few weeks left before the election. At this point does anyone expect to see any future headlines from Fox praising Obama’s speech at the United Nations or declaring him the winner of a debate? Don’t bet on it.

As the days grow short, so will Fox’s fuse on their rhetorical bombs. The good news is that no one but Fox’s glassy-eyed disciples will ever know there was an explosion because, more and more, Fox’s influence is confined to an insular group of fanatics who can still tolerate their brand of dishonest and disreputable pseudo-journalism.

Stephanie Cutter: The Woman Behind Obama’s Message – A Sean Hannity Malfunction

Posted by on September 24, 2012 at 8:48 pm. 5 Comments :

Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother to post a video from the Sean Hannity program on Fox News. He is so utterly irrelevant and obsessed with the most ignorant conspiracy theories and slander, that taking the time to describe him as a waste of time would itself be a waste of time.

However, tonight Hannity produced a segment that purported to be an expose of President Obama’s Deputy Campaign Manager, Stephanie Cutter. Setting aside his blatant lies and smarmy insults, the piece actually serves as more of a tribute to Ms. Cutter than anything else. Her resume as presented by Hannity reveals all the reasons why she is a brilliant and effective communications professional. Any politician would be lucky to have someone so intelligent and committed on their staff.

So I’d like to thank Hannity for being such a loser that he thinks that his hit piece reflects poorly on Cutter. Have a look for yourself:

I’d also like to thank Stephanie Cutter for being an awesome campaign staffer (and really darn cute).

The Takeaway: Mitt Romney And Barack Obama On 60 Minutes

Posted by on September 24, 2012 at 2:06 pm. 2 Comments :

Alright, so Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last night and were interviewed by Scott Pelley. Both interviews were pre-taped and edited to fit into a limited period of time. The questions were nearly identical for both candidates and covered the economy and foreign policy.

So what did the Romney camp choose to focus on the next day? “Bumps in the Road” as the headline on Fox News put it. The headline refers to a comment Obama made regarding the unrest in the Middle East. Here is what the President said:

“I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road.”

Obama was plainly describing the difficulties of transitioning to democracy for countries that have been under dictatorships for decades. Romney, however, extracted a few words and then asserted that they were directed specifically at the deaths of the diplomats in Libya. This is a recurring pattern in the Romney strategy which consists almost entirely of taking fragments of Obama’s comments out of context (see Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context). It sheds no light on any issue of substance and is nothing more than a purposeful distraction and smear.

On the other hand, Romney spoke with Pelley about health care and defended his opposition to individual mandates. He asserted that Health care is available to everyone in America and explained just how the uninsured should go about receiving it:

“We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.”

And then we charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars which results in them losing their homes, going bankrupt, being unable to send their kids to school, and not having the funds to pay for other medical needs or, for that matter, food. Where Romney gets the impression that free medical care is available as necessary at hospital emergency rooms is something he never reveals. What’s more, it directly contradicts his position on this issue from only five years ago when he assailed the use of emergency rooms as a health plan of last resort:

“When they show up at the hospital they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism I don’t know what is.”

Mitt Romney Flip Flop

I’m quite sure that he doesn’t know what socialism is, but that’s beside the point. He must know that he is contradicting himself and advocating a practice that he previously rejected in the strongest terms. It also happens that the practice of relying on ERs is substantially more expensive and has far worse outcomes for the patient than access to regular care from a doctor.

If the media comes out of this taking seriously Romney’s whining about Obama using a figure of speech to describe the “bumps” that will jostle the emerging democracies in the Middle East, while ignoring the far more consequential comments and contradictions by Romney that fail to grasp the the health care challenges our nation faces, then they will have demonstrated once again why the public holds the media in such low esteem.

As for the esteem with which the public holds Romney, it just keeps getting lower by the day.

Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context

Posted by on September 21, 2012 at 11:09 am. 3 Comments :

The GOP’s candidate of the of the one-percent, Mitt Romney, has built his campaign around a unique strategy: Take everything President Obama says out of context and then try to use it against him. This is a tactic that he has been employing repeatedly in lieu of actually telling voters what he would do were he elected.

The latest example is his feverishly grasping a snippet of something Obama said at the Univision forum yesterday. Here is what the President said:

“I think that I’ve learned some lessons over the last four years, and the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle-class families.

So something that I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people so that they can put pressure on Congress to help move some of these issues forward.”

That’s a pretty uncontroversial expression of respect for the American people and including them in the process of reforming government. And it’s something that Obama said since the beginning of his work in national politics. It is, in fact, what “Hope and Change” was all about when he told supporters that “you are the change.”

Mitt Romney latched onto just seven words from the hour-long event and is attempting to attach a meaning to them that bears no resemblance to their actual intent. Those words are “You can’t change Washington from the inside.” Romney has added that phrase to his stump speech along with his promise to affect change ONLY from the inside. That’s not surprising since he has already written off half of the American people as those who “it’s not my job to worry about.” It’s also not surprising that Romney is again exposing his raving hypocrisy, because he has previously said the very same thing about how to change Washington:

Mitt Romney Inside Outside

Let’s recap some of the other out-of-context moments that have become integral parts of the Romney campaign:

“You didn’t build that.” This is a deliberate misquoting of Obama who was actually referring to roads and bridges, not the private businesses that Romney has tried to imply were the subject of the remarks.

“The private sector is doing fine.” This is another misrepresentation where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector, which has grown over the past three years, to the public sector, which has been shrinking.

“We tried our plan and it worked.” Here Romney deliberately asserted that Obama was referencing his own record and implying that it had achieved complete success. In fact, Obama has consistently said that more needs to be done and this comment was plainly referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush’s policies.

“[Obama] removed the requirement of work from welfare.” Romney made this accusation that is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“I actually believe in redistribution.”This was purposefully clipped from a much longer statement wherein Obama was praising entrepreneurs and the free market, while also seeking to improve the parts of government that provide services like schools, roads, etc.

Those examples illustrate the only consistent component of Romney’s campaign strategy: Rip soundbites from Obama’s speeches and build dishonest explanations around them. He uses this tactic because he has concluded that it is better than trying to explain his unpopular and/or unworkable positions on the economy, jobs, Social Security, foreign affairs, etc. And he still refuses to release more than two years of his tax returns.

Look for more of the same in the next few weeks as Romney gets even more desperate for something to talk about that doesn’t result in his foot winding up in his mouth – again.

More GOP BS: Video Of Obama Praising Redistribution In 1998 Was Deceptively Edited

Posted by on September 20, 2012 at 9:21 am. 5 Comments :

It was inevitable. When Mitt Romney started hyping a fourteen year old audio clip that he thought made President Obama look bad, we should have known there would be more to the story. Now, NBC has found the actual video, and it proves that Obama was taken out of context – again. As I reported yesterday…

In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.

The new expanded video shows that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead people with the truncated clip pushed by Romney and his pals in the right-wing press. In the video Obama is seen clearly advancing the principles of free markets that conservatives pretend to support. Here is the full statement with the part previously edited out in bold:

“I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot. How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities.“

This more evidence that the right simply doesn’t care about being truthful. As Romney’s communications directer said, they will not let their campaign be run by fact-checkers. The GOP has already released an anti-Obama ad that includes the deceptive version of this video. And their official response to the discovery of the expanded version simply ingnores the new information:

“Barack Obama said he believes in redistributing wealth among Americans and his policies over the past three and a half years bear that out. Under Obama we have increased our dependency on government with 47 million Americans on food stamps, record levels added to our debt and gutting work requirements for welfare. Instead of pro-growth policies, the Obama administration says they are relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.”

This is their actual response to the long version of the 1998 video, but they merely repeat the short version and never even mention the corrected context. However, they do lie outright about Obama saying that they are “relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.” I defy them to document that charge, but I won’t hold my breath. I do, however, expect them to continue hammering Obama about this video as if the longer version never existed. It’s how they operate. Just lie, and keep lying, and when your lie has been discovered – lie harder.

EMULATING FAILURE: Mitt Romney Adopts The Campaign Strategy Of John McCain

Posted by on September 19, 2012 at 11:44 am. 1 Comments :

Poor Mitt Romney. The wealthy vulture capitalist who, along with his Super PAC pals has raised and spent more money than any candidate in history, finds his campaign in shambles after a series of embarrassing missteps: The atrocious Republican convention, jumping the gun on statements about Libya, getting caught telling the awful truth to a luncheon for fatcat donors, etc. Romney and his campaign advisers have taken a beating at the hands of the public and their own supporters.

Consequently, Romney has turned to the GOP’s tactical playbook desperately looking for a way to dig himself out of the sinkhole that threatens to engulf him. And he thinks he’s found the answer in a chapter titled, “What Would John McCain Do?”

Mitt Romney Recycles John McCain

That’s right. When you’re in political trouble the best thing to do is always to emulate the tactics of the just prior candidate who lost miserably to an inexperienced African-American senator whose middle name is Hussein. And that’s precisely what Romney is doing.

In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip (video below) of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.

However, the take that Romney has put on this has far more sinister implications of socialism and what Romney calls “a foreign concept.” The most obvious corollary would be the circus that surrounded the national joke known as Joe the Plumber. In that citizen encounter Obama uttered the phrase “spread the wealth around,” and created a tornado of right-wing outrage. Never mind that it wasn’t different in principle from Ronald Reagan saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It was an opportunity to miscast the President’s words and throw the mangled result back in his face. Which, by the way, Romney’s crew is also doing with nonsense like “you didn’t build that.”

In addition to this new focus on an old and abridged snippet of audio, Romney has also been recycling Sarah Palin’s classic “palling around with terrorists.” After the tragic and deadly clash in Libya, Romney stepped out in front of the news (and the facts) to accuse Obama of siding with terrorists by saying that he “sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks.” That repugnant remark borders on charging the President with treason. So much for claims of running a civil campaign.

More than anything else, these recent moves by Romney are an admission that he has already lost the election. Resorting to this type of insane blathering demonstrates the depths of his desperation. He is now firmly committed to losing his race for the White House, while stirring up the mouth-foaming radicals of the Tea-publican Party so that they might prevent massive losses in the House and Senate as well. He’s aiming at pretty long odds with this approach. Ms. Palin and Mr. Plumber didn’t do much for McCain four years ago, and reaching back to salvage tactics that have been proven to fail is not likely to advance Romney’s campaign either.

Fox & Friends Gets Punked – But That’s Not The Real Story

Posted by on September 17, 2012 at 5:09 pm. 2 Comments :

This morning on Fox & Friends (the stupidest ensemble, pseudo-news team on American TV), a prankster convinced the show’s producers that he was a college graduate who voted for Barack Obama in 2008, but who is now disappointed and intends to vote for Mitt Romney this November. The video of this train wreck appears to be the work of a stoned slacker who got a kick out of outsmarting the bigwig TV producers. And that may be true.

However, It was not my intention address this prank at first because it doesn’t really appear to be particularly well thought out or executed. What’s more, Gretchen Carlson seemed to quickly pick up on the fact that something was amiss. However, new information has emerged that is far more interesting than the event itself.

It seems that Fox News was determined to invent a story about disillusioned young people who were abandoning the President. This was not a “fair and balanced” study of attitudes among recent college grads, it was a deliberately biased piece of propaganda that jettisoned all journalistic principles in order to deliver their preconceived result.

Max Rice, the aforementioned prankster, spoke with various reporters after the fact and revealed the shoddy quality (or lack thereof) of Fox’s research. Rice told the bookers that he was a college graduate, but that could easily have been debunked by a Google search that would have found a video from his high school graduation only two years ago. Rice also gave contradictory answers to biographical questions, telling them at first that he was an English major, and later that he majored in Engineering.

Fox News let all of this go by because Rice fit the profile of a disaffected former Obama supporter. That was all they cared about. But even worse, Rice says that Fox coached him on what to say during the interview.

“They gave me a paragraph full of bullshit talking points. … They basically gave me a speech and they thought I was supposed to have it memorized.”

Rice is not a very good prankster, but his antics have allowed us to peer into the Fox machinery and see how their phony sausage is made. And that’s worth something all by itself. The news emanating from this episode should have less to do with the stunt that was pulled on the Fox & Friends crew, than with their dishonest attempt to fabricate a story with the intent of damaging Obama’s reputation.

Fox’s determination to manipulate their viewers and spread false information was clearly more important to them than doing proper research and fact-checking. And when all is said and done, this was not a story about a news team getting punked. It’s a story about a news network punking their audience.

The REAL Mitt Romney Just Stood Up: He Calls Half Of America Freeloaders

Posted by on September 17, 2012 at 3:28 pm. NO Comments :

Mother Jones has posted videos of Mitt Romney at a fundraiser earlier this year. The video was taken secretly amongst a group of millionaire donors whom Romney was begging for buckets of cash.

If these videos get the broad exposure that they deserve, we may look back on this as the moment Romney’s campaign died and went to Kolub

In this segment Romney tells his wealthy backers that…

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

Mother Jones has four more videos wherein Romney paints himself as the out-of-touch elitist that we all know him to be. He praises his consultants because of their experience running campaigns in Armenia, Africa, Israel (whatever happened to his campaign slogan “Believe in America?”). He answers a donor’s question about how they can help appeal to Hispanics by saying “Frankly, what I need you to do is to raise millions of dollars.” He offers his stock market prediction saying…

“If it looks like I’m going to win, the markets will be happy. If it looks like the president’s going to win, the markets should not be terribly happy. It depends of course which markets you’re talking about, which types of commodities and so forth, but my own view is that if we win on November 6th, there will be a great deal of optimism about the future of this country. We’ll see capital come back and we’ll see—without actually doing anything—we’ll actually get a boost in the economy.”

Romney knows damn well that the market has more than doubled under the Obama administration, despite their being commies who hate business. Surely one of the reasons he won’t release his tax returns is he doesn’t want people to find out that he is way better off than he was four years ago, since most of his income is from investments.

David Corn summed up the gist of these videos nicely by writing…

“With this crowd of fellow millionaires, he apparently felt free to utter what he really believes and would never dare say out in the open. He displayed a high degree of disgust for nearly half of his fellow citizens, lumping all Obama voters into a mass of shiftless moochers who don’t contribute much, if anything, to society, and he indicated that he viewed the election as a battle between strivers (such as himself and the donors before him) and parasitic free-riders who lack character, fortitude, and initiative.”

If that’s how Romney thinks he will capture the hearts of voters and ride an electoral wave to victory, he is going to be sorely disappointed. It’s fair to say that insulting the vast majority of voters and their family and friends is not a particularly sound campaign strategy. But it’s not as if his strategy has ever been well thought out. Early on he said he likes to fire people, who he also thinks are corporations. And just last week he accused the President of sympathizing with terrorists and blamed the diplomats who had been attacked for the violence committed against them.

Of course, nothing in politics is certain, and Romney could still pull off some sort of miracle. So Democrats need to stay vigilant and work as hard as if they were underdogs. But it seems like every day Romney personally pounds a new nail into his campaign’s coffin, and for that we should thank him on November 7.

Fox Nation’s Shameless Politicization Of The American Diplomats Who Were Murdered In Libya

Posted by on September 14, 2012 at 5:08 pm. 7 Comments :

It’s not bad enough that Fox News lies incessantly and engages in ongoing campaigns to insult President Obama, and the millions of Americans who support him, but today they posted an entirely unnecessary triviality that served only to tarnish a day of remembrance solely for the purpose of landing a political low blow against the President.

The breaking news story that Fox Nation was compelled to report was “Obama’s Twitter Feed Hawks Campaign Sweatshirts During Ambassador’s Casket Transfer Ceremony.” What they thought was important about this information is a mystery. After all, Obama’s Twitter account is run by campaign staff, so it’s not as if the President was Tweeting from the Oval Office. But Fox found it necessary to diminish the President’s tribute by juxtaposing two completely unrelated occurrences.

And what makes this all the more repulsive is that Fox’s intent was so pointedly partisan. They obviously never even looked at Mitt Romney’s Twitter feed (or they did but didn’t care) or they would have seen that, at the same time, he was doing the very same thing. He was hawking “a chance to join [him] on board the campaign plane” for a donation to his campaign.

Fox Nation

That sort of unfair, unbalanced, and hypocritical coverage is why Fox has so little credibility outside of the mental deficients who make up their audience. It is just unfortunate that they have to demonstrate their disgraceful lack of decency on a day like this, and that a ceremony to honor murdered Americans was turned into a circus on the Fox News web site.